Research On The Impact Of Digital Finance On Urban Low Carbon Sustainable Development

In recent years,China’s industry has developed rapidly and gradually become an important source of economic development.However,the modern industrialization process at the cost of excessive energy consumption and ecological environment damage,has greatly hindered the achievement of China’s low-carbon and sustainable development goals.Therefore,it has become an important topic for Chinese and foreign scholars to explore the path of sustainable development of economy,society and environment.With the continuous advancement of technological revolution and industrial transformation,environmental governance supported by digital finance has become an important engine for achieving urban low carbon sustainable development.In view of this,based on the panel data of 263 cities in China from 2011 to 2019,this paper studies the relationship between digital finance and urban low-carbon sustainable development from the perspective of digital finance,and further analyzes the interaction mechanism and possible heterogeneity between the two.This paper starts from three aspects: theoretical analysis,research design and empirical analysis.Firstly,based on financial exclusion theory,sustainable development theory,and long tail theory,this paper proposes a direct mechanism of digital finance affecting urban low-carbon sustainable development and an indirect mechanism with labor flow,capital flow,and technology flow as intermediary variables.Secondly,measure the main variables in the model.Among them,the indicator system of urban low-carbon sustainable development is constructed from seven dimensions,and the entropy method is used to calculate the score of urban low-carbon sustainable development.For the three intermediary variables of labor flow,capital flow and technology flow,this paper constructs gravity model respectively to measure them.The findings are as follows:(1)The development level of digital finance and urban low-carbon sustainable development in China presents a gradual growth trend.(2)Digital finance plays a positive role in promoting low-carbon and sustainable development of cities by promoting residents’ consumption,improving citizens’ awareness and participation in environmental protection,and alleviating financing difficulties in green industries.(3)The development of digital finance can promote the flow of production factors such as labor,capital and technology,while the flow of production factors can promote sustainable urban development by optimizing resource allocation and promoting industrial structure upgrading,and therefore,the flow of production factors plays a mediating role between digital finance and urban low-carbon sustainable development.(4)Digital finance has dimensional heterogeneity,regional heterogeneity,resource endowment heterogeneity and financial development level heterogeneity for urban low-carbon sustainable development.Based on the research conclusions,this paper proposes policy recommendations from three aspects: accelerating the coordinated development of digital finance,improving the flow mechanism of production factors between cities,and improving the supervision of digital finance.The research results provide empirical basis for promoting the development of digital finance,improving relevant policies and measures,giving full play to the energy-saving and emission reduction effect of digital finance,boosting the flow of production factors,and achieving the low-carbon sustainable development of cities.